We are the biggest exporter of agricultural products after the US, which is insane given the size of our country:

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2019/01/18/neder...

There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

> There is no need to import food, we could just start exporting less.

Are you going to pay the unemployment salary for the people who currently work in the agricultural sector?

Only by value. We specialized in expensive produce.

Actually, Dutch export most of their food and turn around and import cheaper food from far away (Spain and Brazil being two common sources).

Check it out at the grocery store sometime. It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Italian immigrant here: let me tell you something. NL may cultivate and export the most mass of agricultural products, but there’s nothing the lit greenhouses you see taking off from Schiphol can do to best the sun scorching the skin of a tomato growing in Puglia. The metabolism it has to crank up 200% to defend against such constant environmental aggression is something irrepetable you can smell and taste.

This is the reason I've stopped buying red peppers in the summer when the local super market starts importing them from Netherlands. In the winter, they import them from Spain. The quality difference is staggering.

My own country is also great at mass producing poor quality food in the sense of taste - in other terms of look, feel and uniformity it's great.

I'm not convinced they couldn't produce great taste in Netherlands, though, if they put their mind to it. I think it's more of a bug in the market mechanisms. But it's depressing for sure. I root for the day small-scale shipping is automated and solved for good, and then I can be the one deciding who I'm buying peppers from.

> It's not so easy to find the nice Dutch produce (the Germans are enjoying it!)

Wait, is Dutch produce supposed to be nice? I know that in Germany, Dutch tomatoes are disparaged as "Wasserbomben", and in Romania the Dutch vegetables are the cheap supermarket stuff that you buy if you don’t a chance to pass by the marketplace and buy something locally grown.

Dutch greenhouses are in fact capable of producing "Wasserbomben" as well as quality produce -- at a higher price point. Unfortunately, supermarkets in most parts of the world have decided they prefer the former.